In the midst of that horrorindeed, in perhaps the most horrific place a Jew could land at the timeprisoners sought to take their images back and made sure that art was still present.
Franciszek Jaźwiecki, a Polish artist and political prisoner at Auschwitz, made portraits of fellow prisoners. Though the portraits portrayed prisoners of various nationalities and ages, they shared the same haunting quality, according to Agnieszka Sieradzka, an art historian at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.
“The most interesting in these portraits are eyes — a very strange helplessness,” she says. “Prisoners created portraits because the desire to have an image was very strong.”
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“Thanks to these artworks, we could also see Auschwitz and the camp in the eyes of prisoners. And this is very unique because we haven’t photos depicting everyday life of prisoners in the camp,” says Sieradzka.
Through these works, she says, we can see the truth about Auschwitz.
